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Book 34: PRANAM & TOTEM

SMILING WOMAN KIOSK

Roadside shrine – woman smiling from a kiosk at the Monkey Temple——glimpses out the car window in these little towns.

MONKEY TEMPLE

Monkey Temple Jaipur, and how! -2018——This was a bitch to draw, because monkeys move like mercury over the filigree woodwork. I’d drawn filigree before, but never monkeys. Fun, though!

 DRAWING MONKEYS

So cute! – [Drew this one] from photos – Learning to draw monkeys from life. God, they’re quick. And boy, do they steal. This one nicked someone’s flower lei——

MONKEY CLIFF

At the Monkey Temple 2018——Drawn from photos taken then. This 18thCentury wooden temple rises in shabby splendor all up a mountainside, monkeys thronged in all the windows. People come to bathe in its natural pools. While I was drawing the first picture, Rupender told me that someone had drowned in the topmost pool, during a storm the day before. The crowds I’d noticed packing the upper terraces were climbing up to see him before they took him away. Rupender also casually mentioned that he and the other guides had seen a leopard on the hill opposite the parking lot. And there were wild pigs on the upper terrace. India in a nutshell. I felt compelled to see the drowned man. He was dead, all right. I didn’t draw him. It didn’t seem right.

Pat and me in a state of joy.

MONKEY FAMILY

Monkey family looking up – 2018——

MONKEY ROOF

Notre Dame has nothing on this—–

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